This suggests that the ecosystem is more stable and conservative than most think it is. Up to a certain degree this is true, but it’s not entirely invincible. Four out of the five websites have been dragged to court and two of them have suffered serious damage.

TorrentSpy was closed by its owner in 2008 after it lost a court case where it was ordered to hand over details of US-based users to the MPAA. Last year, Mininova decided to delete over a million torrents and restrict new uploads to pre-approved publishers following a court decision where it was ordered to filter content. Two other sites, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt, are still battling in court but continue to operate as of today.

Although only 5 sites have dominated the BitTorrent landscape in the last years, there is still room for new sites to move up. Founded in 2009, the relative newcomer KickassTorrents has already gained a spot in the top 5. If it continues to grow at the same pace as it has in the last few months, it might end up in the top 3 at the end of this year.

Below we’ve listed the top three BitTorrent sites of each year since we started following them. The rankings are based on the number of daily visitors each site had at the end of each year. The Pirate Bay is the only site that appears in all rankings. The 2010 list is reported as of today, and might change before the year is over.

2005

1. TorrentSpy
2. The Pirate Bay
3. Mininova

2006

1. TorrentSpy
2. Mininova
3. The Pirate Bay

2007

1. Mininova
2. isoHunt
3. The Pirate Bay

2008

1. The Pirate Bay
2. Mininova
3. isoHunt

2009

1. The Pirate Bay
2. Torrentz.com
3. isoHunt

2010?

1. The Pirate Bay
2. Torrentz.com
3. isoHunt

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Anderson, a former associate of TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnel, configured the TorrentSpy mail server to copy and forward all of the site’s email to his own Gmail account. The 34 pages of information he gathered was then sold to the MPAA for $15,000. TorrentSpy’s owner later sued the MPAA, arguing that they had spied on him illegally, but this case was lost.

The court ruled that the MPAA did not technically intercept them under the WireTap Act, although jurisprudence would suggest otherwise. TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnel told TorrentFreak that he has filed a brief at the Court of Appeals and that the MPAA is expected to do the same in the near future. From then on it can take up to a year before the appeal is heard in court.

TorrentSpy is supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that described the earlier decision as a “dangerous attempt to circumvent privacy laws.” Indeed, if upheld the ruling will basically legalize the unauthorized copying of other people’s emails, which raises serious privacy concerns.

The Pirate Bay, who were also the target of MPAA spying activities, have not taken any action. Instead, spokesman Peter Sunde laughed it away. “I think it’s amazingly funny if the MPAA bought information like that, expensively, and against the US law. Only proves their stupidity and that they have no case,” he told TorrentFreak earlier.

For the MPAA, losing the appeal might have some serious repercussions, especially for MPAA President Dan Glickman. Glickman is already highly criticized among Hollywood insiders for his lack of effectiveness. Since his contract renewal is due around the same time the hacker case appeal will be decided on, his job is on the line.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The case was initiated in January 2006 and in the summer of 2007 a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to start logging all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities and these were to be handed over to the MPAA. In a response to this decision, TorrentSpy decided to block access to all US visitors instead.

The trouble for the torrent site was not over though. On March 24 2008 the site went offline and a month later TorrentSpy’s owner was ordered to pay a $110 million fine after the court terminated the case. This decision is currently under appeal.

Today marks the passing of a year since the site’s closure, so TorrentFreak took the opportunity to catch up with TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnell to see where he stands 12 months on. We began by asking him whether he believes he made the right decision when he took the site offline.

“Most decisions you can review with hindsight and decide if it was good or bad. However, this is one that I still question even today,” Justin told us. “We took the site offline to show we were serious about settlement – we figured if they hated the site and therefore us, taking the site down would make them happy.”

However, the MPAA didn’t back off, quite the opposite. “Their bewildering reaction was to get angry instead. In short, we took the site down so it would stop being such a contentious issue with the courts and I would probably make the same decision today,” Justin said.

Although the site has ceased to exist, together with one of the largest BitTorrent communities, Justin is still dealing with the TorrentSpy legacy in court.

When we asked him what he missed the most, Justin said he didn’t “miss out” on any of the downside fun. “It is sad that a vibrant community that shared ideas and opinions about technology, politics, society and other speech has been obliterated, but the sad fact is that Goliath wins most of the time,” he told.

“I have become cynical about the fairness and standard of justice in our courts and political process,” Justin said commenting on the legal proceedings involving his site, and the future of file sharing in general. “I see very little opposition to more and more restrictions on the actions and speech of the Public to ‘protect’ the entertainment industry, especially now.”

A handful of torrent sites that are willing to stand up in court are no match for the powerful lobby of the entertainment industry according to Justin. “Money is the gas of the political engine and in 2008 alone the entertainment industry gave $47M to politicians. What do you think these profit obsessed corporations expect in return?”

It is indeed sad to see that lobbyists have manage to influence lawmakers into some of the most idiotic decisions. Change has not come yet for P2P apparently. We wish Justin all the best, and hope that his appeal is a success.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities. Even worse, the BitTorrent site was ordered to hand these logs over to the MPAA. TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnel didn’t want to give up the privacy of the site’s users, and decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US instead. In March 2008 he went further still, taking the decision to shut down completely.

“We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the TorrentSpy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008,” Bunnel wrote in a message to users of the site. A month after this decision the case against the MPAA was terminated and his company was ordered to pay a $110 million fine, which it has now appealed.

TorrentSpy’s lawyer, Ira Rothken, told CNET News, “We’re arguing the court was wrong in procedures and wrong in judgment. In a one-hour hearing regarding discovery issues, the court terminated the case and didn’t give TorrentSpy a trial. We believe the court was wrong and abused its discretion. We believe the court ordered TorrentSpy to do things that was in violation of the site’s privacy policy and we believe that the tension between the court’s discovery orders and user-privacy rights is an important issue on appeal.”

The MPAA wont be too happy that TorrentSpy hasn’t given up the fight yet. At the time, MPAA’s Dan Glickman was very pleased with the outcome of the case, as he said: “The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.”

With the appeal, filed at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, TorrentSpy aim to overturn this earlier judgment, and restore hope for other BitTorrent site owners in the US.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In 2005, an associate of TorrentSpy, Robert Anderson, ‘changed sides’ after an internal dispute and decided to work with the MPAA instead, gathering evidence against the BitTorrent site.

The man configured the TorrentSpy mail server to copy and forward all of the site’s email to his own Gmail account. He later sold the 34 pages of information to the MPAA for around $15,000 but later relented and went back to work with the torrent site, telling them what he knew. The same man also spied on The Pirate Bay.

The EFF had filed a brief with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that federal wiretap laws protect emails from interception while they are stored on the mail servers that work to transmit them. However, the federal district court ruled that because the emails were momentarily stored on the server during the delivery process, under the Wiretap Act they were not technically intercepted. The ruling itself only applies to the 9th District, but could have relevance at other courts in the US.

In its friend-of-the-court brief, the EFF states this ruling is incorrect and must be reviewed, since it could allow the government to spy on other people’s emails in the future, without the need for a court order.

“The district court’s decision, if upheld, would have dangerous repercussions far beyond this single case,” Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston at the EFF said. “That court opinion — holding that the secret and unauthorized copying and forwarding of emails while they pass through an email server is not an illegal interception of those emails — threatens to wholly eviscerate federal privacy protections against Internet wiretapping and to authorize the government to conduct similar email surveillance without getting a wiretapping order from a judge.”

It appears that, as long as emails aren’t actually intercepted en-route, it could be legal for the government to request that an ISP copies an individual’s emails after they arrive on the mail server. This would not be classed as a breach of wiretap laws, which is a worryingly easy circumvention of vital privacy laws according to the EFF.

The EFF asks the Court to vacate the district court decision, and and rule that the MPAA hacker did “intercept” email communication from TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnell. The full amicus brief can be viewed here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

It is uncertain at this point whether TorrentSpy will appeal.

Unsurprisingly, MPAA’s Dan Glickman was very pleased with the outcome of the case that lasted over two years, as he said:

“This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of sites. The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.”

“The claims made by the MPAA in this case don’t stand up to any sort of scrutiny,” says Andrew Norton, head of the US Pirate Party in a response. “It is also clear that our judicial system urgently needs some unbiased education in modern technical matters, as anyone that has watched this case knows the judge is out of her depth. What chance does justice have in that situation?”

In 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.

In a response to this decision – and to ensure the privacy of their users – TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic and revenue.

This was not enough for the MPAA, who argued that TorrentSpy had ignored the court decision. The legal battle continued, and this lead to a preventative closure of the site by Justin, to protect the privacy of its users.

UPDATE – Wired have the judgement available in their coverage here

UPDATE – TorrentSpy will appeal the decision.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The main reason for the shutdown is the ongoing legal battle with the MPAA, which started February 2006. “We now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users – permanent shutdown,” Justin writes.

By the end of 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.

In a response to this decision – and to ensure the privacy of their users – TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic and revenue.

This was not enough for the MPAA, who argued that TorrentSpy had ignored the court decision. The legal battle continued, and this eventually led to a preventative closure of the site by Justin, to protect the privacy of its users.

Brokep from The Pirate Bay had this to say about the closure: “Today all big torrent sites are pressured somehow. TPB has its share of pressure, however we expected it and have a legal system that is more just in cases like this. The way that the copyright lobby is going at this is totally wrong and we can’t let them win. And we won’t let them win. Today we reached a loss of a site, but it was more a person having to give up for economical reasons than anything else. The copyright lobby has their big cards – money and influence. In the long run they will have to give up as well. And when they do, I’ll go to the US and buy Justin a well-deserved beer.”

At this point it is not clear what will happen to the TorrentSpy.com domain. Perhaps Justin should offer it to other BitTorrent site owners?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The MPAA already claims a victory, but Justin Bunnell, founder of TorrentSpy does not want to give up yet. He told News.com in a response: “It’s not like they proved their case. It’s not like they proved that TorrentSpy infringed copyright, I think we have a lot of grounds for appeal and we’ll pursue it vigorously.”

John Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA said in a response to the ruling: “The court clearly recognized that defendants engaged in evidence destruction because they knew that such evidence would prove damaging to them. The sole purpose of TorrentSpy and sites like it is to facilitate and promote the unlawful dissemination of copyrighted content. TorrentSpy is a one-stop shop for copyright infringement and we will continue to aggressively enforce our members’ rights
to stop such infringement.”

To get a more “balanced” view we asked Andrew Norton, a spokesman for the US Pirate Party for a response, and he said: “This case shows again the need for radical reform in the US legal system, as well as educating our judges to deal with modern technology. This is not the 1970s, where the basic underpinnings and mechanics of technologies were readily understandable by the layman, but require significant knowledge in the technologies involved. Perhaps it is time we had specific courts with jurists who are kept upto date on technological progress, so that justice can be sought, rather than judgments based on which side has the most lyrical attorney.”

In August, a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data stored in RAM. In a response to this decision – and to ensure the privacy of their users – they decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. TorrentSpy, once the most visited BitTorrent site on the Internet has taken some serious hits from the MPAA and this ruling doesn’t make it easier. In October we reported that TorrentSpy’s traffic, and thus their revenue have plunged after they banned US visitors, and it is not likely that the movie studios will back off the site shuts down completely.

To be continued…

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Despite the differences these four guys sometimes have, they all believe that no other P2P protocol performs better than BitTorrent at the moment. However, there’s no doubt that there will be changes in the future.

“Technology is always evolving and I have little doubt that 5 or 10 years from now we will be using a different protocol” says Justin from TorrentSpy. Peter (aka Brokep) from The Pirate Bay also thinks new protocols will take over eventually. “There will be other alternatives,” he said “Not necessarily ours but others will come.” Niek from mininova has more faith in BitTorrent but expects that the protocol will evolve rapidly, an opinion shared by Gary from IsoHunt.

Most of the admins also predict that mainstream production companies will eventually embrace BitTorrent and P2P and some of them hope to play an active role in the transition from old to new media distribution. Below you can read the full responses to the question I asked them: What do you think the future holds for BitTorrent and your website?

Niek from Mininova

I’m sure that we’ll see quite a few changes in the P2P landscape during the next couple of years.

From a business perspective, I notice that content producers recognize more and more the advantages of P2P distribution models (see e.g. the Pariah Island case). We all know that DRM is close-to-death, and major studios are now rethinking their business models, which is a good thing. We’d like to see Mininova play a major role in this shift, so stay tuned for some related announcements the coming weeks :)

Looking at the technical side of things, I expect that the BitTorrent protocol will evolve rapidly. See for example (audio and video) streaming, which is already possible and supported by several clients. Other interesting developments are BT-capable chips and TOR-like functionality. New protocols (like the one proposed by The Pirate Bay) might arise, but only time will tell whether these will substitute BitTorrent. Personally, I think BitTorrent can go a long way with some extensions and modifications.

Having said that, Mininova’s only focus won’t be BitTorrent: when the “next big thing” arises, we’ll definitely consider backing it.

Justin from TorrentSpy

I don’t really concern myself with the future of BitTorrent the protocol but I do care about peer-to-peer as a technology platform. Technology is always evolving and I have little doubt that 5 or 10 years from now we will be using a different protocol. However I firmly believe that the use of peer-to-peer for everything from data transfer to shared CPU power will take the Internet to the next level.

If we look at TV you will already see this trend. Media use in our society is transitioning from someone else deciding what you want (push) to something that allows what you want, when you want it (pull). Right now you turn the TV on at 8pm to watch your favorite show or skip channels until you stumble across something interesting. The future is a demand system where you can buy and watch an episode the network has “released” any time you want. Tivo is a first step in this direction.

Surprising as it may seem, this can be done pretty easily today, but is tied up in complex licensing schemes, conflicts between producers and distributors, and a wide array of selfish interests. Unfortunately many companies use their power and influence to halt and punish innovations they cannot think of ways to make money with. The monopolies tried to stop the VHS, DVD, and MP3 player, but thankfully failed when they took it to Court. Now Imagine for a second all the amazing products they did manage to squash…

Gary from IsoHunt

With so much momentum of content behind BitTorrent, I don’t see it going away anytime soon. Unless there’s a far superior and open protocol that is superior to BitTorrent in efficiency and convenience, for which BitTorrent is pretty hard to beat, I see we’ll like have new developments by extending the existing BitTorrent protocol. Although Bram Cohen talked about Merkle trees as a major revision in improving BitTorrent, and that didn’t go anywhere (at least not in open source). When BitTorrent Inc. do significant enough closed source changes to the protocol, BitTorrent will fork or new open protocols will rise.

For future of BitTorrent sites and IsoHunt, I’ve always been an advocate of open and public access. The more sites try to go underground, the more reasons the authority think there’s something dark at work and more they will take sites down by force – Oink and other private trackers for example. I’ve been blogging about P2P and its economic sense/legitimate use cases for a while (latest one on independent music), and I believe that’s what will give BitTorrent continued adoption and acceptance as a de-facto protocol and internet standard. It’s like the WWW: if people didn’t use the early web for other purposes than for porn (which was prolific in the web’s early days), the governments might have a different view and regulations on the internet now. It’s not what copyright infringement or “piracy” may be occurring, on P2P, BitTorrent or the internet. It’s what new use cases we nurture that benefits both end users and content producers, that will correct the stigma behind P2P and BitTorrent and accelerate their acceptance. Development on isoHunt and our other sites will for sure be done with this in mind.

Peter aka Brokep from The Pirate Bay

First of all, I don’t think it’s easy to predict the future. But I do think that it’s very important to be very promiscuous when it comes to the protocols we use. BitTorrent is currently the best but this might change. There will be other alternatives, not necessarily ours but others will come.

In five years things are probably very different from today, technology wise and politically. The latter thing is the biggest issue, not the technology. I would foresee that streaming is bigger and the companies still try to frame their users to use their locked down systems, maybe not DRM but rather streamed with their clients (like the BT DNA system) which will contain other copyright protection scams.

What do you think?

It’s great to hear the opinions and predictions of the leading BitTorrent admins, but what do you think the future of BitTorrent will be? Will we be all using a new protocol 5 years from now, will BitTorrent sites change, will TV and movie producers embrace BitTorrent?

Let us know!

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

TorrentSpy, once the most visited BitTorrent site on the Internet has already taken some serious hits from the MPAA and are now facing another attempt to try and knock them out for good. Earlier this week we reported that TorrentSpy’s traffic, and thus their revenue have plunged after they banned US visitors, but it seems that the movie studios wont stop until the site shuts down completely.

In court documents obtained by CNET News.com we read: “(TorrentSpy) took steps to make the Server Log Data unavailable for the express purpose of avoiding compliance with the (court) order. This claim should be seen for what it is: another illegitimate attempt by defendants to evade authority of this court and the May 29 order.”

And to make it even worse, the MPAA has now asked the judge to rule that the .torrent links offered (not hosted) by TorrentSpy are illegal and infringing copyright – which is an absurd demand of course.

TorrentFreak asked Justin, the founder of TorrentSpy, for a response and he told us: “They are attempting to distort the fact that we have never logged user actions on the site into something entirely new and different. Lets put this into playground terms:”

PUNK: “Teacher! His friends hit me!”
TEACHER: “Did they actually hit you? How many times? When? Where?”
PUNK: “I have no idea! I think they did though , I just don’t like him!”
BOY: “I didn’t hit him. My friends never did either.”
PUNK: “Make him start tracking his friends! Where they go and what they do.”
TEACHER: “OK. Start tracking them.”
BOY: “Well since you bring it up, my friends don’t even go to his school…”
PUNK: “Waaaaahhhh! He is a meanie! Punish him!”

I guess we all know who the punk is here. Stay tuned!

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.